Thursday, 12 May 2016

I’ve thought about mailing you for a while and have never got around to it, but your recent video ‘Vivisection: the next 10 years…’ made me think of a couple of points I’d like to share with you.

I’m a recent graduate, working in a comparative immunology lab, and about to start a PhD in global health at a major UK university. I’ve been vegan for just over a year and was vegetarian before that. A few years ago, I went on a 4 day training programme on murine/mouse experimentation, and it was about this time I went vegetarian. The guy doing the training was vastly experienced in animal research, having worked on everything from rats to pigs to dogs, and spent the 4 days delivering material on anaesthesia, minor surgery, euthanasia, animal behaviour etc. Although he had not trained formally as a biologist (i.e. started out as a young animal technician and worked his way up), I was amazed at how much he knew about animals. On the first day, he gave an introductory talk that touched on perspectives regarding animal research, and to my surprise, he actually touched on the hypocrisy of meat eaters who are against animal research (I’ve attached the graphic he used in his presentation, which shows the magnitude of animals killed for food vs. animals killed by cats vs. animals killed for research). This really made me think deeply about my carnivorous diet, and shortly after I came home, I went vegetarian. Although it was a while before I went vegan, I’m still grateful to this guy for making me realise, whether he meant to or not, that I could no longer justify by decision to eat meat.

If found this one is difficult to summarize, and difficult to put a title to. Veganism, like democracy, is imperfect, and susceptible to criticism; but that makes it all-the-more-important, and makes it important that we (i.e., vegans) don't preach it as a religion (to be believed in), but instead explain it, while being honest about its limitations and flaws. On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4z6PKSYrjE

Monday, 21 March 2016

The minor agonies of the whole man-of-principle thing (and refusing to wear wool suits), in an era when being an uncompromising character is considered a bad thing. On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCIn_Xs-VLI

Freelee's Credentials: Half-Truths & Pseudoscience. This one actually contains quite a few digressions (with all due humility) on my own credentials, and on the struggle to make it clear (in newspaper interviews, job interviews, etc.) what exactly your credentials are (and aren't). On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNzElhpjgjQ

Friday, 18 March 2016

The graphic above is a snapshot of air pollution at a particular moment in time: circa 11:30 AM (Beijing time), 17 degrees Celsius in Kunming, in mid-March, 2016.

However, you'll notice that Kunming is actually less polluted than many of the surrounding cities, at least at this moment in time. Remarkably, air-pollution in 西雙版納, 德宏, and many other (small) cities has caught up with Kunming, and has even exceeded it.

I wonder if Kunming has upgraded its power-plants to take some measures to ameliorate air-pollution that haven't yet reached the smaller cities. Those smaller cities are often presented to tourists as offering cleaner air than the regional capital; but, at least for the moment, that seems to be untrue.